Zcash Tunnels of Privacy

Problem it Solves:

The Problem: Privacy Education is Boring, Gaming is Surveillance Traditional cryptocurrency education fails to engage users meaningfully. Meanwhile, modern gaming has become a surveillance nightmare—tracking every click, monetizing player data, and requiring always-online connections to corporate servers.

Tunnels of Privacy solves both problems at once.

🎮 What It Does A fully self-hosted, privacy-first gaming experience that teaches Zcash and financial privacy concepts through engaging gameplay:

Tunnels of Privacy — A dungeon crawler RPG with turn-based combat, 99 unique bosses, AI-powered NPC conversations, and 4-player co-op multiplayer ZLOCK ZHAINER — A 3D arcade puzzle game (Lumines/Columns-inspired) with chain combos and special abilities

🔒 Why It Matters Problem Our Solution Games track everything you do Zero telemetry — no analytics, no tracking, no data collection Games require accounts & logins No accounts needed — just download and play Multiplayer requires corporate servers Self-hosted WebSocket server — you control the infrastructure Privacy education is dry & forgettable Learn through play — Zcash facts woven into gameplay, boss lore, and item descriptions Games are bloated with dependencies Single HTML files — no build step, no npm, just open in browser 🛠️ Key Features 🤖 AI Dungeon Master — Local LLM integration (Ollama) for dynamic NPC conversations 👥 4-Player Co-op — Host-authoritative multiplayer with real-time combat sync 👹 99 Unique Bosses — Each with custom art, abilities, and privacy-themed backstories 🔑 King’s Keys — Collect BIP-39 seed words as you play (educational mechanic) 🎵 10 Original Themes — Full soundtrack with Zcash fact ticker ✨ Custom Particle System — With visual editor for creating effects 🎯 Who Is This For? Zcash community members wanting to share privacy concepts through fun Privacy advocates seeking entertainment without surveillance Educators looking for engaging ways to teach cryptocurrency concepts Gamers who want to actually own their games, not rent them 💚 Built for the Zcash Ecosystem to share to family and friends. Every element celebrates financial privacy:

Boss names reference surveillance threats (Metadata Swarm, Chain Analysis Serpent, etc.) Heroes inspired by real Zcash contributors Educational facts displayed during gameplay Shielded transaction concepts embedded in game mechanics Privacy runs deep.

Challenges I Ran Into 🚫** No Programming Background** Built entirely through vibe coding with AI assistants. The challenge was learning to communicate precisely enough to get working code — and catching when AI “fixed” things by breaking other features.

🤖 LLM Integration Supporting both local (Ollama) and cloud (OpenRouter) AI providers with graceful fallback when neither is available.

👥 4-Player Multiplayer WebSocket state synchronization across multiple clients. Host-authoritative architecture — most bugs were server relay issues, not client code.

🌐** Zero Infrastructure** No backend, no database, no accounts. Everything runs client-side or self-hosted. Single HTML files, localStorage saves, user-hosted servers. TTS for text to voice and other features.